


RUN HARRY RUN

by Chex (provetheworst)



Category: One Direction (Band), The 1975 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Divergent Timelines, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provetheworst/pseuds/Chex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has thirty minutes to obtain £5,000 and get to Chalk Farm, or Matt Healy’s going to die. A 'Lola Rennt' AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	RUN HARRY RUN

**Author's Note:**

> the call or delete with matt healy pretending to need money off harry styles was the best of all things, and i wanted to make fic happen where he actually DID need the money. money needed on short notice somewhere across town makes me think "lola rennt/run lola run," so this happened.
> 
> my bro ella looked this over and helped british it up a bit. thanks duder. any remaining problems are my bad.
> 
> there are no piers in london, but i made one up for the sake of the fic. i tried to keep most things borderline canon otherwise.

“Hello, Harry.” Matt looks back over his shoulder. He forces a smile then leans forward, hunched into the phone booth, his head down. “This’s Matt. Matt Healy. Sorry, my phone’s dead, or I’d have called you from my number, but … don’t have my charger. I was - like, it died right before I called you, so, yeah, hello.”

The quiet stretches on long enough Matt thinks he’s been hung up on, but finally Harry speaks again after his initial hello. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good. It’s - how are you?”

Harry speaks very slowly. “I’m all right.”

“It’s nice to talk to you. Sorry I’ve never rung you before now. Now is - quite a time to ring you.”

“No worries,” Harry says, his voice warming up. He keeps speaking slowly - like he does in interviews, Matt thinks. He’s seen Harry on the telly before. This really is the worst way to initiate contact.

“Eh, yeah, I was just wondering -- this is gonna sound ridiculous. Basically, I need, like, five grand, and I’m in Chalk Farm,” Matt gets out, stumbling and hesitating over his words. He takes a deep breath. “And there’s a bloke here who … really, really wants the money, and I’ve owed it for a bit but I couldn’t get it all together, so if you could get it over here … Yeah.”

“You all right, mate?”

“Not really.” Matt takes a deep breath. “If I don’t get it to him, he’s going to kill me. Like, literally, gun to the head, bang, kill me.”

“Should I call the -”

“No! No, no, definitely not,” Matt says. “I, uhm. That. Would be a bad idea, I think. For me. And for everyone. He knows people.”

“Five grand.”

“Five grand.” Sweat stings Matt’s eyes, makes them water. His forehead’s damp. He wipes a hand across his mouth and the skin of his upper lip’s beaded with sweat, too. He takes a deep breath. “And, yeah. Chalk Farm. If you could - how long?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes? That’s not a lot of time to get all the way over there.”

“I know,” Matt says. He swallows several times, panicked, before he manages to get the words out. “I know. Like - I had the money. I had it! But I got mugged, and he’s not going to believe me - you probably don’t believe me, but I swear it, Harry, sorry. I tried calling like -- six other people already --”

“Okay. Look, Matt. Where in Chalk Farm are you?”

“Uhm, I’m - in a phone booth, actually,” Matt says. “But I’ve got to get to the Pret by Chalk Farm, actually, so that’s where … you have to be. And where I’ll be. I should go. I should let you go. I mean, cell phones, but - you’ve got to get here and all, so.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Yeah. All right. Look, I’ll see you soon. At Pret.”

“At Pret.”

-

“I’ve got to get to Chalk Farm,” Harry tells his assistant. “Like, in half an hour.”

“Harry, you can’t just leave.” She rubs at her temples. “I thought you were feeling sick. If you’re feeling that much better, you’re finishing the shoot.”

“No, I’ve really, really - it’s important. I need five thousand pounds and I’ve got to get to Chalk Farm. Trust me, all right?”

“Are you in trouble?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at him.

“No.” He sniffles, rubs at his nose, and pulls his coat tight. He looks around the pier. The rest of the band are chatting idly amongst themselves. Ben’s talking to the cameraman. Lou’s fixing Louis’s hair. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”

There’s a bathroom down at the base of the pier. He jogs over to it, goes in. There’s another door on the other side. He leaves through that, where no one can see him, and runs.

He feels stiff from being tired and unwell, but the movement warms up his joints and he catches a good rhythm quickly. He’s skipped going to the gym as often as not over this break, but he can still run.

Chalk Farm’s too far to run. He has to get to somewhere he can catch a taxi. Waiting for one to come will take too long.

Getting five grand is going to be the easiest part of all this, and Harry thanks god for Simon Cowell putting so much faith in them a few years prior. He can just go to the bank, as long as he can find a branch; he’s got millions. Harry lacks familiarity with this part of the city, and has no clue where he’s running to yet.

Pulling out his phone, he checks the map, searches for the closest bank. It’s four streets away. Too close to catch a taxi to get there.

He sighs and starts running again, dodging around cars, cutting through traffic to cross the street when he realizes he’s almost missed a turn. A car swerves to miss him, smashing into another. Harry turns to look over his shoulder, slowing to watch; the doors of the struck car, a big black monstrosity, swing open to reveal a group of hard looking men, chief among them a huge, balding fellow with a black jacket and a sour expression. The group surrounds the other car, their leader going to the driver’s side door, hitting his fist against his open palm.

Harry swallows hard and then picks up his pace again.

Normally he would stop, he tells himself. Normally he’s not trying to save Matt Healy’s life. He’d thought about calling back and checking if it was a prank, but Matty sounded distraught. Harry’s waited ages to get a chance to talk to Matt, and he’d rather that not be the first and last time. 

Harry gets to the bank panting and out of breath; the receptionist near the door jerking her head up at the site of him, raising a hand and then lowering it without saying anything. Whether she’s more surprised by spotting actual Harry Styles in her bank or having someone sweaty and out of breath slam the doors open is hard to say.

The queue is ages long. Harry bites back a groan, and very gently taps the shoulder of the pensioner in front of him. “Excuse me, miss, I was wondering if I could step ahead of you in line, as I’ve got a bit of an emergency -”

She lifts her nose up at him, eyebrows arched in dignified affront. “Haven’t we all, these days?”

“My friend’s going to get shot if I don’t get this money in time.”

“That’s not my fault.” She turns around, keeping her head held high, and ignores him.

The line inches forward. One person gets helped. Eventually, a second does. The second wants a bloody mortgage, and keeps droning on and on. Harry bounces on his heels. Five grand is too much to get from the machine, he’s pretty sure, though he’s tempted to try. He doesn’t dare lose his place in the queue.

Finally, the pensioner ahead of him gets her turn, and then, at long last, Harry gets called to the counter. He pulls out his bank card, says, “I need five thousand pounds, please. Like, as a withdrawal, if that’s okay.”

The teller eyes his card, then looks up at him and frowns. “Can I see your ID?”

“What? Oh, yeah, of course.” Harry digs around in the pockets of the coat. It’s not his coat; someone loaned it to him. His actual coat’s back on the pier. His pants aren’t his, either. He owns a million pairs of black skinnies and they’d still wanted him in a new pair, ones without the fade marks from his wallet on the back pocket, because that was important to Ben Winston’s vision.

He takes a deep breath.

“I haven’t got my ID. Can you - I hate doing this. I’m Harry Styles. Can’t you just google me?”

“That’s against bank policy.”

Harry holds up his phone. “I will phone Simon Cowell, personally, right now. He’ll tell you who I am.”

“What next, you’ll call the queen?”

“I - god. Fine, how much can I get out of the cashpoint?”

“I don’t know if I should let you use it. Look, let me get my manager. Wait here a moment, please.”

Harry sniffles, wiping at his nose again. His heart’s settled down from his run, but he checks the time on his phone and his heart starts pounding again. He’s wasted ten minutes here already. He can’t do this.

He grabs his card off the counter and hustles to the exit, not breaking into even a jog lest he worry the security people.

As soon as he gets out the door, he starts to run. His card has a limit of £1,500 right now. He’s called the bank and had them set it higher before, when he’s wanted to buy things. His assistant is the one who told him to set it low in case his card is stolen.

He pulls out his phone, slowing to a quick walk as he searches for a taxi.

“Yeah, hi, this is - I’d like to temporarily raise the limit on my card, if that’s all right. For - not for purchases, for the cashpoint, yeah. What do you mean?” Harry’s panting for breath. “Are you sure? I need five grand in cash. Yes, I’m serious, why?”

He catches a taxi. Maybe he can work something out. He’s got three minutes.

“Drive as fast as you can,” he says, leaning forward to speak through the opening in the plexiglass pane between the. “I’ll pay you extra.”

“I’m not breaking the law, sir.”

Harry slips him twenty quid. He’s got five hundred in his wallet right now, which isn’t near enough. Four eighty, with the loss of that note.

“If you say so.”

-

“He’ll be here,” Matt says, craning his head around to look down the street, left and right. He bounces on the balls of his feet. He didn’t give a precise address; maybe Harry got lost. Maybe Harry thought it was a prank and isn’t coming.

Matt’s stomach twists itself up into knots intricate enough that, if his stomach could enter itself in a balloon animal competition, it’d surely win over people with decades of experience.

“He’s already ten minutes late.” The gruff old Scot scratches at his back, dragging it up to reveal a sliver of the gun tucked between his trousers and his back, a reminder of what he intends to do to Matt. “One more, and you’re done.”

“Please, don’t do this. It’ snot even me who owes you the money,” Matt says.

That earns him a noisy scoff. “Of course not.”

“I’ll get it to you later, look. I promise I can. I just need a little more time.”

“Not good enough.”

-

Harry gets out of the car. The taxi driver’s dropped him on the wrong side of the street, but he doesn’t complain. He gets out on the curb, and straightens up, looking around. Matt’s arguing with a burly, balding fellow who looks as stereotypically mean as Harry’s ever seen a person look.

“Matty!” Harry says, waving his hand in the air. Traffic comes between them for a moment, then passes. Matt spots him. Another car goes by. “Over here, mate! Give me a second. Traffic.”

The tension drains visibly from Matt’s shoulders. As another car whisks past, Harry breaks out into a sprint.

Someone shouts “Begbie!” in a piercing voice and the big Scot turns for a moment, missing what happens next.

Three fourths of the way across the street, an ancient lorry’s brakes choose that moment to fail, and the vehicle slams into Harry hard before swerving off to the side, clipping a number of parked vehicles before coming to a stop, crumpled and smoking. 

As the vehicle goes one way, Harry goes flying in another; his head slams against the pavement first, then his shoulder. He bounces against the pavement a few times speed before skidding to a stop.

Matt leans over him. His mouth’s moving. Harry can’t hear a thing, and tries to say as much, but his mouth isn’t working right, either.

His last thought is that he doesn’t even have the money.

“Not like this,” he tells himself.

***

“I’ve got to get to Chalk Farm,” Harry tells his assistant. “Like, in half an hour.”

“Harry, you can’t just leave.” She rubs at her temples. “I thought you were feeling sick. If you’re feeling that much better, you’re finishing the shoot.”

“No, I’ve really, really - it’s important. I need five thousand pounds and I’ve got to get to Chalk Farm. Trust me, all right?”

“Are you in trouble?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at him.

“No.” He sniffles, rubs at his nose, and pulls his coat tight. He looks around the pier. The rest of the band are chatting amongst themselves. Ben’s talking to the cameraman. Lou’s fixing Louis’s hair. He lets out a slow breath, and forces himself to take a second to think. “Can you help me get the money?”

“Harry, what’s it for?”

“You know Matty, off the 1975?”

“I can’t say I’ve met him, but let’s say I do. What about him? Is he asking for money?”

“It sounded really urgent.”

“You can’t go giving people money because it’s ‘urgent,’” his assistant says. “If you just handed everyone cash, you’d end up broke.”

“I know. This’s different, though. It’s Matt.” Harry scrubs a hand to his hair, which earns him a frustrated groan from his assistant. She’d tried to style it, earlier. She’s lucky he hasn’t put his headband back on yet. He looks down at her hand and gets a flash of inspiration. “Like, imagine if your fiancee was in trouble and needed the money. But before you were engaged or anything.”

She raises her eyebrows. “So now you’re going to marry him, is that it?”

“No, no. But it’s like - look. Will you help, or not?”

“We really need to get back to work.”

“Fine,” Harry says. “All right, fine. Wait, though, how much can I get out of the cashpoint at once?”

“Harry,” she says, warningly.

“How much?”

“£1,500.”

“Cheers,” Harry says, and sulks off to the other side of the pier to call and have his withdrawal limit raised. A lot of sweet talking later, and he gets what he wants.

He also has fifteen minutes to get up to Chalk Farm, he realizes once he’s hung up the phone, wishing he’d gotten going sooner.

He breaks out into a run.

-

There are no empty taxis anywhere on the way. He sees one or two drive by, but they have passenger in them already.

He stops for one he thinks is empty, but a woman a half block before him catches it instead, giving him a rueful smile as she gets in. 

He sighs and starts running again, dodging around cars, cutting through traffic to cross the street when he realizes he’s almost missed a turn. He’ll get to the bank on foot and pray he has time to get to Pret. 

A car swerves to miss him, smashing into the tail end of an ostentatiously polished black car. Harry turns to look over his shoulder. A group of four menacing men get out of the black car, surrounding the vehicle that had hit them. Their leader hits his fist against his open palm as he glares down at the driver. 

Harry winces but keeps running. Normally he would stop, he tells himself. Normally he’s not trying to save Matt Healy’s life. He’d thought about calling back and checking if it was a prank, but Matty sounded genuinely distraught. 

He shouldn’t be running this much when he’s sick, he thinks. Not if he wants to get anywhere with time enough to save Matt.

The amount of trouble Harry expends on this feels absurd, but he idolizes Matt’s songwriting enough to justify it for now. He stumbles into the bank and slumps his way to the cashpoint, panting for breath. He wipes his drippy nose on his sleep, slipping his card into the cashpoint and waiting for it to react.

He gets the money out, watching in bemused awe as the machine spits out note after note after note. Even though he has millions in the bank, £5000 remains a large sum, especially when held in his hands instead of displayed on a screen or written on a check.

He stuffs the money into the pocket of his huge, puffy winter coat, leaves the building, and starts to run again.

-

Three streets gone and he has to stop for breath, sniffing hard. Post-nasal drip creeps down his throat and he swallows and gasps for air. He hates being sick. His limbs ache, cotton fills his head and dries out his tongue, and he has nowhere near enough time to make it up to Chalk Farm on foot in this condition. Even healthy the run would have challenged him; now, it’s impossible.

He spies a girl on a moped. She spies him, and stops, and says, “Oh my god, Harry Styles?”

“Hiya,” Harry says. “Can I borrow your moped?”

“Can you - what? Can I get a picture with you?”

“I’ve got to get to Pret.”

She looks over her shoulder, incredulous. “It’s right there. Harry, oh my god, I love you so much -”

“Look, look, just let me - I mean a different Pret. Can I ride with you? Will you take me?”

“Yeah, of course.” She swoons, wiping a hand across her forehead. She lets out a shaky laugh. “God, look at this. I’ve run into Harry Styles in the street. You’re real.” Pulling out her phone, she starts snapping pictures as Harry walks up.

“I mean it. Pictures later. I’ll even pay you for getting me there, I just have to - just down from the Chalk Farm tube. It has to be that specific Pret. I mean it.”

“Chalk Farm,” she says, laughing. She scoots forward on the seat of her scooter, patting the leather behind her. “Hop on. You can - oh my god - you can hold onto my waist. Safety first, right?”

“Yeah, okay,” Harry says. “Can we get going?”

-

“He’ll be here,” Matt says, looking around anxiously. He bounces on the balls of his feet. He didn’t give a precise address; maybe Harry got lost. Maybe Harry thought it was a prank and is sitting somewhere nice and warm, texting his friends about how Matty Healy’s gone mental.

Matt feels nauseous, and he scans the sidewalk for a place to throw up other than the pavement. There’s a planter with a scrawny tree in it three doors down which he makes a note of. He almost laughs when he thinks about asking for permission to be sick.

“He’s already fifteen minutes late.” The gruff old Scot scratches at his back, dragging it up to reveal a sliver of the gun tucked between his trousers and his back, a reminder of what he intends to do to Matt. “One more, and you’re done. You fucked up bad, kid. You fucked up bad. We trusted you with this. How fucking hard is it? You closed the deal fine. You had the money. Fuck. You fucking tosser, I should have fucking known.”

“Please, don’t do this. It’s not even me who owes you the money.” Matt holds up his hands. “I’m serious, give me a bit longer. Shit. It’s not even me!”

That earns him a noisy scoff. “Of course not.”

“I’ll get it to you later, look. I promise I can. I just need a little more time.”

“Not good enough.”

A couple on a moped go careening by at breakneck speed; Matt watches in dull fascination, welcoming the distraction in what he’s convinced are his final moments.

“I swear,” Matt tries, one last time.

“Sorry, mate,” the man says. The couple on the moped have stopped half a block away and are arguing loudly. The man jumps off at about the time the angry Scot puts a gun to Matt’s head.

Time slows. The man flicks the safety off with his thumb.

“Please,” Matt says.

“Matty!” the guy from the moped says. “I’ve got the -”

“Good night,” the Scot says, and fires.

“Oh, fuck this,” Matt finds the time to say. The bullet hits. He slumps backwards. There’s blood everywhere. “Fuck this.”

***

“I’ve got to get to Chalk Farm,” Harry tells his assistant. “Like, in half an hour.”

“Harry, you can’t just leave.” She rubs at her temples. “I thought you were feeling sick. If you’re feeling that much better, you’re finishing the shoot.”

“You need to help me get five thousand pounds,” he tells her. “It’s - one of my friends is in a lot of trouble.”

“Harry, you can’t treat all your friends like they’re charity cases. Don’t you remember -”

“No, this time it’s actually really bad,” Harry says. “Like. Life or death. I’m serious.”

She watches him for a long while, then sighs, going over to confer with Ben Winston and some of the crew there for the shoot. Harry could have told Ben himself, he supposes.

When she comes back, Ben’s with her. “I’ve got a thousand on me,” he says, pulling out his wallet. “Who’s this for, anyway?”

“You know Matt Healy?”

“Really?” Ben laughs. He hands over the money. “Here, go ask the rest of the lads. Between them you’ll get at least halfway there, probably.”

Harry nods dumbly. He has five hundred in his wallet, bringing him to £1,500. He goes and asks Niall, who’s got £900. Liam has a tenner, and between them Zayn and Louis have another £190.

None of the crew have enough to help, and Harry prefers not to bother them anyway. That his band and director had so much surprises him because he’d thought they used their cards instead of cash.

“Can someone drive me to the bank?” he asks Ben, feeling weary. He wipes the snot from his nose.

“I don’t think - can you get a taxi?” Ben looks at his watch. “If you’re going to be gone, I’m going to just shoot with the rest of the lads for a bit. Close-ups and everything. We can’t really spare anyone to drive, unless you want to wait, see if someone from the label --”

“I’ll just … I can go myself,” Harry decides, and sets out at a run.

-

He arrives, panting, at the bank. There’s a £1,500 limit on his card, but that is, somehow, the exact amount he needs. He can call the bank later to have it raised if he wants something more, or talk one of the lads into paying for him. 

Or get Matt to pay him back, maybe, when the situation isn’t so dire. Maybe he’ll take Matt to lunch after, and find out how he got in this mess in the first place. Probably Matt will be busy, but Harry daydreams about it anyway as he waits for the machine to dispense his money, shoving it into the pocket of his borrowed coat.

The coat’s fucking huge, and he feels a bit overheated wearing it inside, but it’s freezing out and he’s sick and his bones feel cold even though his skin feels hot.

He shivers, taking a second to brace himself. He swallows. Snot runs down the back of his throat, and his eyes feel watery as he heads back out into the late March breeze.

Trying to find a taxi proves almost impossible. He’s got ten minutes remaining.

He stops for one he thinks is empty, but a woman a half block before him catches it instead, giving him a rueful smile as she gets in. Harry groans, then shakes his head and gets back to running, ignoring the glares he earns from the people he has to dodge around on the sidewalk.

He dashes across a street right as the signal’s changing, managing to cut off the taxi he missed moments ago. The taxi’s brakes squeal, and another car rear ends it. A group of men get out of the car, among them a huge, balding Scot who smacks his fist against the open palm of his other hand as he walks up to the newly-dented taxi.

Harry keeps running.

A girl with a moped pulls up alongside him, driving slow enough to match his pace. “Are you Harry Styles?”

“Yeah,” he says, panting. “I can’t - stop right now. Bit of a hurry.”

“Need a lift?”

“Please.” He stops; she stops. He gets on.

“Oh my god. I can’t believe it’s really you. Can I get your autograph, after?”

“Sure,” Harry says. “Can you - we’ve got to get to Pret.”

She snorts. “There’s one across the street. What, trying to get there before breakfast’s over? You’re so cute, I love you. You know they serve it all day, right -”

“Oh, my god, look,” Harry says. “I need to get to the one up by Chalk Farm. It’s not that far.”

“Oh, yeah, I know the one,” she says, pulling away from the curb. “What is it, then? Chalk Farm, that’s by, are you meeting Grimmy?”

“Why would I - no.” Harry leans against her back, wrapping his arms around her waist as she weaves through traffic. “I’ve just got to get something to a friend, or he’s going to end up in trouble.”

“Ooh,” she says. They stop at a traffic light and she pulls out her phone. “Can I take a picture of us?”

“Fine,” Harry says. He shakes his head, clears his throat, then puts on a smile. “Sorry, I’m normally not this rude, I promise. It’s just a really serious situation. Like - life-threatening and all. So it’s all a bit, you know, sorry. Sorry.”

“Oh my god.” She snaps her picture right before the light changes, then slams the accelerator, sending the moped careening forward. The sleeve of his jacket scrapes against the side of a big black car. He turns to look, sure the occupant is familiar, but trying to look around makes him feel a bit nauseous so he closes his eyes before he can figure out who it is.

“Almost there,” she says. Harry looks at his own phone, very carefully. Three minutes to spare, and there’s Matt.

“Thanks, love,” Harry says, kissing her on the cheek apologetically.

“Is that Matt Healy? Can I get his picture, too?”

“Dunno. Can you - wait here,” Harry decides. “I’ll sort something out.” He lets go and hops off, trotting over to Matt.

Matt looks up. He huddles against the wall, hands deep in his pockets, cheeks flushed with cold. He shivers but gets it under control in time to say, “Hey, Harry, hey. You made it.”

“I made it, yeah,” Harry agrees. “So what’s, like. What’s the situation?”

“A bunch of … really dangerous people got me mixed up with someone else,” Matt says. “Who was running money for a drug deal, I guess, and then he lost it. And they thought he was me, and told me to have the money by now, or else, only then I got my wallet stolen and my phone was dead -”

Harry wipes his nose with his sleeve, nodding. Everything blurs, and he takes a few deep breaths. “Okay. Okay. Well, I’ve got the money.”

“I don’t know where they are,” Matt says. “I don’t - think I should go, because like. I don’t want this other bloke to get killed, and I don’t want them like … hunting me down, either. It’s all - really bad.”

“Yeah. Okay, look. We’ll just wait.” Harry shuffles in next to Matt, standing against the wall and watching the street. He sniffles.

“You all right?”

“Bit sick. Had a video shoot we had to get up early for. S’all right.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Matt holds out a hand in an uncertain gesture, but before he can say anything further, a big black car pulls up.

One polished door swings open, and a huge, balding man in a black jacket steps out. He hits his fist against his open palm a few times, showing his teeth in a joyless smile. “There y’are, lad. Good on ya showing up. Thought you’d try and run. Who’s your friend, then?”

“Just - that doesn’t matter,” Matt says. “We’ve got the -”

The man hits him in the nose.

Matt cowers. He may be tall, but he’s scrawny, and he’s dwarved by the massive Scot threatening him. “We’ve got the money!” 

“That was just for fucking it up in the first place.”

“Shit.” Matt wipes the blood from his nose. His mouth forces itself into a smile, obsequious and hopeful. “Give him the money, mate -”

“Begbie!” A querulous voice cuts through the noise of traffic and construction and city life, high and whinging. The man who owns the voice bears passing resemblance to Matty - around the same height, similar haircut, but even scrawnier, eyes sunken and skin a jaundiced yellowy shade. 

“Oh, like fuck there’s two of you,” the Scot snaps, throwing his hands up in disgust. “Whatever, like I give a shit. One of you gives me the money.”

“I’ve got it,” Matt’s doppelganger pants, pulling off his backpack. He bends forward in a deep bow, holding his backpack out above his head like an offering as he stares at the ground. “I got it, I got it, I swear.”

The Scot opens the bag, peering inside, then tosses it to one of his compatriots who emerges from the black car in time to catch it. “Count this, Cunningham. See if it’s the whole five grand or if the other one’s got it.”

Matty’s double puts his hands on his knees, breathing hard; Harry sympathizes. “It’s the whole thing, I swear.”

Five anxious minutes later, and the Scot’s friend nods, says, “That’s all of it.”

“We’re never fucking dealing with you again, Gibbs. You either, other Gibbs, fuck you. Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

Matt holds his hands up. “I’m not anybody. Promise.”

Gibbs gets dragged into the car with the Scot and his friend, and Matt lets out a huge breath when they drive away.

“All right,” he says.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Right. Okay. All right. Hi.”

“Hey.”

Matt stares at Harry. Harry stares at Matt. Six or seven inches, at a maximum, separate them. Harry snuffles, tries to clear his throat, swallows hard.

“Hi,” Matt says again, and grabs the back of Harry’s head, pulling him in and smashing their mouths together. Harry makes a startled noise, then closes his eyes, leaning into it.

They break apart, Harry feeling even more short of breath than he had after he’d run halfway to Chalk Farm.

“D’you,” Harry starts, pausing to wipe at his mouth. His cheeks feel hot; he can’t quite stop smiling. “D’you want to get lunch, maybe? I’ve got all this money, see. Five grand, actually.”

“Yeah,” Matt says. “Yeah, that’s - a good idea. Lunch. Fuck. Anywhere but Pret, okay?”

“Anywhere but Pret,” Harry agrees, and leans in to kiss Matt again, to remind himself that really did just happen and that he did, in fact, get kissed by the actual Matt Healy.


End file.
